The Vampire Diaries is an interesting show that holds my attention for several reasons. First being this: it triumphs over the book series. I hated the books. I read through the first three with gritted teeth and only started reading the fourth because of the plot twist at the end of the third – L.J. Smith quickly turns 360 degrees back to her original direction and I threw the book at the wall seeing as how it had lost any potential value for me.
Thankfully, the CW show started with the premise of the book and threw most of it out the window. They’ve made numerous changes, some delightful, and some I don’t really care about either way. However, season 4 had some shaky ground that lead to the train wreck of season 5. I watched season 5 with my fingers over my eyes. The following critique contains spoilers up to Season 6, episode 6 “The More You Ignore Me the Closer I Get”, aired November 6th, 2014.
Katherine and Enzo – beautiful precious wonderfully entertaining Enzo! (Michael Malarkey is hitting it out of the park and manages to look like he’s bunting)– were the highlights of season 5. And by Katherine, I mean watching her decay and hate being human while annoying Stefan constantly, her daughter and the travelers were ridiculous. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief of the very sad and small statistical possibility that Katherine’s daughter would also have been turned into a vampire – but Nadia had no personality beyond her desire to reconcile with her mother and then have her mother stay alive to finish their reconciliation. Essentially, Nadia servers no purpose except to provide Katherine and the rest of the group with a tie to the travelers. The writers didn’t seem to bother providing her with a personality outside of this – her emotional range goes from sullen to moody – so is essentially similar to the emotional range of a cup of jello.
(from dailyforbes on tumblr, here)
Bonnie died at the end of season 4. I know there are plenty of people who like Bonnie, who ship Damon with Bonnie, but at the end of the day when Bonnie’s not bantering with Damon she’s angry for no reason, happy to ride on a horse of superiority and ruin every else’s fun. Of all the characters on the show, Bonnie has shown the least growth over six seasons – except for dying. I was extremely comfortable with Bonnie being dead. Of course, this means the writers weren’t really planning to kill her. So Bonnie becomes the anchor, and is for a whole moment interesting again, but is mostly just in a lot of pain and trying to be stoic about it. Maybe I’m alone in this but it feels like Bonnie was the mother of Nadia – both are characters for a purpose instead of characters with a personality. At least she sort of died again at the end of season 5. Kat Graham describes herself as ‘not attached to the character’ (read it on Hypable) which may be why I feel so disconnected from Bonnie.
Stefan/Elena in season 5 is trite. This insisting that they’re meant to be because they’re the doppelgangers and they all belong together is tired and it’s high time to get over it. Stefan and Elena broke up so that the show could move onto something new, and this feels like trying to placate ‘Stelena’ (Stefan and Elena) fans during a time of ‘Delena’ (Damon and Elena). Let the people (and hey, the characters too I guess) move on!
The saving grace of season 5 was the Whitmore secret vampire lab, which was the only interesting plotline of the season. Tying Damon’s backstory in, bringing in Enzo as a fabulous new character who provides us with a sarcastic and upbeat sociopath – hey wait a minute, he’s Damon from season one! No wonder we like him so much. At the end of the day I’m okay with Elena getting tortured too – it gave Damon a reason to be angry and he’s motivated, passionate and fierce when protecting her.
So finally, the season of bad plots and minimal character development ends with both a metaphorical and literal bang as more or less everybody dies then comes back to life and brings a few missing characters with them. Alaric returns to us! Excellent. I love the person Alaric brings out in the others – or did, previously as a vampire. He humanizes and provides a moral compass for Damon as well as a companion, a fiercer side of Elena, a mature side of Jeremy… in general, Alaric = good and I’m happy he’s back.
In summary: season 5 was off balanced and headed in the completely wrong direction: mainly boring-ville, population incredibly bored citizens who would scream to be entertained but have in fact fallen asleep due to the boredom they have incurred.
Now the writers clue into a major truth of tv life: television couples are at their most interesting when they want to be together but can’t for some reason. So, we start season 6 with Elena believing Damon is dead and Damon trapped in limbo with Bonnie. Excellent! Elena’s grieving self is out of control which is a lot more interesting than her conflicted I love Damon but I might be fated to be with Stefan angst. Caroline is spiraling without a home and her desperation is palpable. Jeremy is off the rails with grief, Alaric has no idea how to be a vampire let alone a super powered one, Tyler is petrified of becoming a werewolf again…and Liv and Luke are still around for whatever reason, but hey, they might have potential. Or well, Liv does now that she killed some kid in a cornfield. I love traumatic events that drive people insane, they’re so much fun to watch!
So season 6 is on the path to turn things around from season 5 by actually being interesting and cutting back on annoying characters. Though I dearly miss Katherine’s schemes, at least I still have Enzo to kill people and his beautifully hilarious friendship with Caroline to make me smile. Damon fighting for a resisting amnesiac Elena is bound to be wonderfully entertaining now that he’s back in the real world – and maybe I’ll even get lucky and Bonnie will stay gone for a little while. Here’s hoping the Vampire Diaries team noticed the small drop in ratings* last year and have decided to try and spice it up a little – or I may not be able to hang on until season 7.
(from The Vampire diaries Gift Blog on Tumblr, found here)
Until next time,
Love,
the TV Addictress
**according to Wikipedia’s reporting of the Nielson ratings which are a flawed rating system but it’s all we’ve really got to work with at the moment.
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